"In an arresting journey through the netherworld, Alice K. Turner explores the landscape and dynamics of Hell as envisioned by writers, artists, theologians and thinkers from Plato and Augustine to Milton, Calvin, Byron and T. S. Eliot. Starting with the worlds of the dead of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Zoroastrians, Greeks, Romans and Jews, Turner moves on to the sketchy biblical basis for Christian Hell and its increasing importance in thinking about the afterlife. After the fact of Hell was settled, it was up to writers like Bede, Gregory the Great and most of all Dante to give the graphic descriptions of an infernal region where the wicked endure torments. Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire poured cold water on the idea of Hell, yet, as Turner shows, Hell, far from disappearing in the 20th century, has been one of its central metaphors. Scores of intriguing black-and-white plates reveal how Bosch, Giotto, William Blake, Michelangelo, Rodin and others have shaped popular images of the underworld." --Publisher's Weekly
Editorial Reviews
"A lively popular introduction to views of the other world from ancient Sumer to the present...generously illustrated." --Washington Post Book World
"One heck of a read...Turner's book reveals a sophisticated mastery of theology and psychology as well as art history and comparative religion." --Los Angeles Times
"A spirited guide to traveling in the nether regions...as efficiently organized as Dante's circles." --Voice Literary Supplement
"If thy ever get to running bus tours through hell, Alice K. Turner will make an excellent on-board guide." --Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A hell of a bargain." --New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Alice K. Turner has been fiction editor of Playboy since 1980. She lives in New York City.
